Archive for January, 2012

Say you’re marooned on a deserted island, or better yet, you wake up in a cave with broken leg only to realize that there’s a survival kit at hand with splints, instructions, food and water. But because you are pathetic, aged, and practically blind you are unable to read the instructions that tell how to administer the splints and inflate the life raft… did I mention the life raft? Well, I’m no longer worried about this possibly tragic end as I got these in the mail the other day…

Actually, my Mom was reading my blog where I was kvetching about the different strength reading glasses I use and that I felt I needed more powerful ones and she sent me a link to get these beauties. They’re 4.0 strength which is higher than I’ve seen in stores and the piece de resistance is dual headlights… and the two pair I got (buy one get one free) are in the haute couture crimson amber hue. Here’s another shot where it’s darker in the room to get the full effect…

Now I can finally work in the dark during an electrical storm. The bug and I took some short videos to discuss possible uses but as video sometimes does, things went off message. First there’s me and then the bug…

Sofia watched this one of herself and is disgusted because she says she doesn’t sound like herself…

OK, onward and upward. I shellacked all week and here’s some pics…

I’m really excited about the last two with the white terra sig over the black terra sig. Of course, I have no idea what will happen in the firing. I believe the white will end up translucent which could be really nice but it could also all but disappear. Last but not least here’s a bottle/vase that is down at KMAC that I hadn’t gotten a pic of before…

I traveled out of town last week to Southern Illinois to visit some very good friends of mine and we had a great time. One day I taught them how to play cribbage and oh hell and we played for hours drinking beer and sarcastically ribbing one another. This past monday, I swung into decoration mode from throwing mode and spent the week terra sig-ing and burnishing. The product is a table full of blank slates or more accurately blank canvases just waiting to get shellacked…

Here’s a closeup of freshly applied terra sig still wet (pre-burnishing). I would like to believe that the Italian/Spanish potters would refer to this state as terra sigillata mojada (sounds like supercalifragilisticexpyalidoshious)…

Under the heading of “Ripley’s believe it or not” I went to lunch with my friend Ray… you may remember a post about Sofia and I visiting him and all his new chickens here. Anyway, apparently having chickens creates certain conditions in the yard and in the coop. One is a hawk hanging around the backyard waiting for a yummy chicken nugget and another is mice… lots of mice. I guess this is because the poultry, despite their food supply not being paltry, still scatter the food as they scratch and fling it far and wide within the confines of their caged abode. So Ray says, “I go out the first day after setting traps and I’ve got two traps and both of them have two mice in each.” What are the odds of that? Then he resets the traps and the next day he found two more traps with two mice each…

Oh, I forgot to warn about the pic if you happen to be a bit squeamish. I simply cannot get over the chances of this not happening… what?, were they holding hands as they approached the murine guillotine? “hey, Minnie how ’bout we head on over to that piece of wood with the giant peanut butter buffet before we head out on the town for a night of gnawing through drywall?” Seriously, four times. OK, scrabble. My good friend Terry and I resumed our ongoing super scrabble tournament. We haven’t played in a while because Terry is becoming quite the pool player and tends to spend free nights practicing. Anyway, I gambled early and lost and got so far behind in the first 10 or 15 minutes that I actually considered forfeiting for the first time. I did manage to pull close toward the end but alas I lost yet again…

So I don’t know about all the other people who cannot see anymore and need “reading glasses” but they are one of the banes of my existence. I’ve gotten so that I need 3 different strengths, 1.25s for TV from across the room, 2.50s for throwing and 3.00s for detail work like shellacking. Of course, I can’t stand wearing things so I take them off the first chance I get and because of that, I can’t find them and if I have two pair on the counter I have to put one on to read the strength of the other one. I’ve been thinking lately of getting some 4.0s online since the strengths don’t go that high in any of the stores. Anyway, I found out that I can get 3 pair of them at this giant store that will remain un-named for 7.50 so I recently got 3 pair of 3.0s because my current 3.0s are covered with clay. When I purchased them, I noticed that the frames were metal as opposed to the plastic frames when I had gotten them before. Who cares, right? I’m only wearing them when I work. So I worked all week with my new glasses on and I kept thinking, these don’t seem to be all that clear. I kept taking them off and polishing the lenses on my shirt and holding them up to the window to see if static electricity was making clay dust adhere. But still, I had a general dissatisfaction in the overall clarity and just resigned myself that they were of inferior quality and that I was gonna have to get more expensive ones from now on. Then, on a lark, I happened to pick the specs in question up while wearing the old pair that was lying around and noticed something almost imperceptible…

There’s a thin protective piece of clear plastic on the lenses! What a dumbass. In other news, the bug lost another tooth…

It was really great having her home during the winter break. It seems that I prefer vacations from school just as much now as when I was in school. Here’s the bug with a “palace” she built with all her little creatures and some of her own that she made…